Richard M. Nixon in The Vietnam War

Richard M. Nixon (1913 - 1994) was a Republican senator from California and the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Prior to his presidency, he also served as Dwight Eisenhower's vice president from 1953 to 1961. Ultimately, his presidency ended in disgrace, with Nixon 's 1974 resignation in the midst of the Watergate scandal.

In his first term as president, Richard Nixon promised the American public that he would reduce U.S. troop levels in Vietnam. He pursued a plan he called "Vietnamization," whereby the U.S. would gradually withdraw from the war, leaving the South Vietnamese army to shoulder the bulk of the fighting. Despite his pledge to bring American G.I.s home, American ground troop levels in Vietnam remained high and the Nixon administration expanded the war into the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. In 1973, during Nixon's final year in office, the last U.S. combat soldiers left Vietnam, but military advisors and some Marines remained.